Page 53 of The Lady Makes Her Mark

Chapter 17

Alistair swore when he looked into the mirror, then clawed at the misshapen knot of his cravat. He’d tied and untied the damn thing half a dozen times already, and what little remained of Mrs. Swetley’s starch was on the point of giving up the ghost. “Good God, man. What’s the matter with you?” he muttered sternly at his reflection. “You don’t care about this picture, remember?”

But he did care, too much, for the artist.

He closed his eyes, tied another knot without watching himself or without checking his success afterward, and finally pulled on his most elegant, most carefully tailored coat of blue superfine. Miles had selected it last spring. He’d paid for it, too, after insisting that Alistair couldn’t possibly squire Freddie and Georgie about Town in the drab sort of thing he usually wore. Alistair tried not to think about what any of his sisters would say if they happened to see him as he crossed the house.

Why had he taken Constantia to his father’s studio? He never acted on whims, and that had been a whim of the worst sort.

Or had it?

Truth be told, he’d been thinking of it since the day they’d arrived.

He couldn’t help but think of it whenever he was at Rylemoor, of course. Couldn’t help but think of his father. Memories of him were like a smudge in the corner of his vision that he couldn’t blink away.

But as much as he would like to tear down the entire west wing, to bury that room and its contents and its history in the rubble, he had hated the thought of Constantia toiling away in the schoolroom with a box of cheap crayons when he knew a proper art studio was just a stone’s throw away.

He scoffed to himself as he trotted down the steps. As if anything his father had ever done could be described as proper.

The entry hall was empty as he crossed it. As were the cloisters, though given where they led, this was hardly surprising. In spite of the bite of the late-November air, he paused when he reached the door at their end. The padlock hung open. Constantia must already be inside. Picking his way across the stones, he made his way to the stairs and went up, then hesitated two or three steps from the top. A mixture of dread and eagerness stewed in his gut.

There was a word for men who took pleasure in torturing others. Was there a word for a man who was willing to torture himself? For the pleasure of a woman who regarded him with distrust and even contempt?

Fool.

For just a moment, as he stood on the threshold of the studio, he wondered whether he’d mistaken his way and ended up somewhere else. The light streaming through the west-facing windows was almost the only familiar thing left about the room.

He wasn’t surprised to discover that she had rearranged a few things. He hadn’t expected her to clean, however. To brush away cobwebs and polish jars of pigment until they shone like gems. He’d always thought of her as a bit . . . well, scattered. Disorderly. Weren’t all artists? But in her case, perhaps his judgment had been skewed by the accident, the jumbled contents of her valise, the muddied shoes, the worn and wrinkled dresses.

Here, certainly, she had instilled order. She had sorted and stacked the canvases, tucking the spoiled ones neatly away in a corner. She had even covered that wretched orange chaise with a sheet.

The transformation was almost enough to make him forget the awful history of the room.

He dragged in a shuddering sort of breath, and with it a lungful of air spiced with the sharp tang of mineral spirits. His sputtering cough alerted her to his presence.

“Ah, Lord Ryland. I was just beginning to wonder.” She stepped from behind the open door of the cabinet, her dress covered with a pinny apron made of coarse osnaburg, which he suspected her of having borrowed from the scullery. Her wrist was no longer bandaged. “I apologize for the smell, but I found some brushes that needed to be cleaned.”

“That may be a lost cause.” Surely whatever sort of animal hair they were made of had deteriorated over time.

“It may,” she agreed. “But I thought it would be worth a try to salvage them. They were excellent quality, once.”

Of course they were. My father insisted on the best.

She had looked him up and down as she spoke, so he stretched out one arm to his side. “Do I meet with your approval?”

Her mouth popped open and he caught a glimpse of the pink tip of her tongue pressed against her teeth. He could almost read the retort on it. But then she pressed her lips together instead and gave an enigmatic smile. “My approval is hardly relevant, my lord. Won’t you sit down?” She gestured toward the covered chaise.

He took a circuitous route toward the center of the room, past the now-empty table. “You must have worked for hours after I left yesterday.”

“Mm. Yes.” She was looking for something now, first peeking into the depths of the cabinet and then feeling in the pockets of her apron. “I wanted to be prepared. And drat it all, what have I done with my pencil? Oh.”

With a self-deprecating little laugh, her fingertips went to the knot of hair piled on the top of her head, and she tugged free the implement that must have been strained with the task of holding all of those curls in place. Locks of fire tumbled over her shoulders and down her back.

He stood there for a moment, mesmerized at the sight, weak-willed as a moth when it spied a flame.

“Sit, please.” She twitched her fingers at him, motioning him toward the chaise again. In the afternoon light, her hazel eyes were bright, a sort of golden brown flecked with green. “Make yourself comfortable. I’d like to get a number of sketches today, different angles and expressions. They will make it easier for me to finish the details of the portrait without requiring you to sit for hours. And most of all, they will help ensure that the final product is true.”

“I don’t think my aunt is aiming for truth.” He eased onto the edge of the cushion. He’d always imagined it would be more comfortable—such an ugly thing ought to have some redeeming quality. “She wants . . . an advertisement, of sorts. Something that will make eligible misses—or really, their doting papas—open up their purses and buy what’s pictured.” She turned her face away so that her hair hid her expression from him, but he heard some small noise of disapproval. “But I forget, you do not like my little jokes.”